Tesla Model S drivers have now clocked 1B miles globally

Electric car manufacturer Tesla has announced (press release in German) that Model S drivers have now clocked up 1 billion road miles around the world.

A new landing page has been set up to celebrate this milestone, too, equating the mileage to “4,186 trips to the moon” or a “2,000 year road trip,” while also reminding us that one of the vehicle’s core selling points is its benefit to the environment — “570,000 tons of CO2 prevented” and “10 years of pumping gas,” it proclaims.

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Founded in 2003, Tesla came to prominence initially with the Roadster, which was one of the first all-electric sports cars to hit U.S. highways en masse when it rolled out of production in 2008. Tesla has produced a handful of electric vehicles since, including the upcoming Model X, but the Model S has emerged as one of the best-selling plug-in electric cars, ousted only by the Nissan Leaf in 2014.

While Tesla doesn’t disclose its vehicle sales numbers on a monthly basis, reports suggest the company has shifted around 75,000 Model S cars since they went to market in 2012, which would make it the third best-selling plug-in electric vehicle of all time around the world. Interestingly, the Model S became the first electric vehicle to come out trumps in total new car sales in a single month in a whole country — in September and December 2013, both times in Norway.

After 10 years in business, Tesla turned its first profit back in 2013, and earlier this year the company reported its best-ever quarter, selling 10,030 cars in Q1 2015, representing a 55 percent year-on-year rise.